Character Shilling on Marvel

[DragonKent17]

Sometimes in Marvel we hear about a character who doesn't really line up with the way they've been described, whether it be their abilities or their personality. Sometimes, though, this information all comes from a second character who is simply amazed at this character. They sing their praises, gushing their little hearts out.

This is what is a trope known as Character Shilling. Whether it be an attempt to make us like the character, a way of quickly establishing that someone new is a badass a level above anything we've seen before or whatever the case may be, other people will be extremely impressed with this person and let us the viewers know about it. Whether they actually match up to the hype is optional. Sometimes they really are amazing, and sometimes we have ourselves a case of Informed Ability. Or worse, Creator's Pet.

Marvel has plenty examples on their characters and biggest examples being Ben Reilly, Wolverine, The Sentry, Carlie Cooper, the Inhumans, Silk (under Dan Slott's pen), Jane Foster as Thor (under Aaron's pen) and of course Carol Danvers as Captain Marvel

Thoughts?

[catbellysqueezer]

Not sure I understand what you mean here.

Aren't characters always as powerful as the writer wants them to be?

[Sutekh]

I haven't read much (or anything...) with some of these characters; Ben Reilly, Carly Cooper, Silk, etc. so I have no idea. I haven't read anything that makes me think that Carol Danvers has really been 'shilled.' She's gotten a push, sure, but nothing egregious like, for instance, the introduction of Mantis to the Avengers back in the day, when she was tossing Thor and Iron Man around with her stupid alien martial arts.

For many characters, like Wolverine, for every writer who goes a bit overboard with him, there's another who slaps him down hard, capitalizing on how he's got no movement powers (and literally needs someone like Colossus to *throw him* at any enemy who can fly, or is capable of keeping more than 18" away from him), or effective defenses (sure, he regenerates, but that's no defense against being thrown into the ocean, buried under an avalanche, hit with a telepathic / mind control attack, turned into a pig, or one of the 10,000 other things that can and will go wrong during a battle when super-powers / magic / alien super-tech are involved).

[DragonKent17]

What i mean when a writer ,producer or director tries to present a character shilled with other character praising him/her. Generally speaking, this tends to be more effective with villains than with heroes, as having the other characters act completely terrified of them tends to build up the antagonist as a credible threat, especially if the villain is rarely or only breifly seen otherwise. And what better way to establish that someone is Famed in-story? Alternately, if the character doesn't live up to the hype, shilling can be used to indicate we're dealing with an Narrator or an individual that's easily impressed.

Many examples are: Alice in the Resident Evil films, Jennifer Lawrence as Mystique in X-Men films, Rachel in Friends, Lana Lang in Smallville, Grant Ward in Agents of SHIELD and of course Felicity Smoak in Arrow and other crossovers

[jetengine]

What you mean is when a character isnt shown doing anything but another character tells us how cool they are. There was a whole sequence with tons of characters in space for example. Riri was not one of them. Later on a secondary character hypes up how Riri was so cool during all of it.

[JudicatorPrime]

One person's shill, is another person's Front Man/Woman. We also call them Hype Man/Woman. It's a pretty common device.

[U.N. Owen]

Carlie Cooper. Nuff said.

[H-E-D]

This thread just seems like an excuse for people to dump on the usual targets.